Media members outraged after cancel culture comes for Alexi McCammond: 'Where the hell are we as an industry'

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Media members across the political spectrum expressed outrage Thursday after Alexi McCammond was forced out as Teen Vogue's editor-in-chief over backlash to tweets she posted as a teenager.

McCammond's hiring at the far-left magazine this month caused an uproar among its young staffers. Despite the fact that she had initially apologized in 2019 for the tweets, some of which were offensive to Asians, McCammond made additional apologies and met one-on-one with her prospective new employees.

On Thursday, McCammond finally announced that she and the online magazine had agreed to "part ways".

The 27-year-old former Axios reporter's tenure at what she described as a dream job was ended before it began, and media personalities from left, right, and center bemoaned the knives-out mentality of cancel culture.

McCammond's former Axios colleague Jonathan Swan asked "where the hell are we as an industry" if a person's repeated apologies for tweets aren't enough.

"I’ve worked with @alexi for four years. I know her well and can say this unequivocally: The idea she is racist is absurd," Swan wrote. "Where the hell are we as an industry if we cannot accept a person’s sincere and repeated apologies for tweets when they were a teenager?" 

CNN correspondent Abby Phillip wrote McCammond was "obviously not who she was when she wrote those tweets," and while stipulating it was fair to "demand true remorse," she wished McCammond had been given a chance. 

Left-wing MSNBC host Medhi Hasan said the situation made him "sad and frustrated," saying there was a difference between "active, current racists" and people who apologized for things they said long ago.

"Have we lost all sense of proportion? And which of us hasn't said or done things we regret?" he asked.

"Cancel culture is real," Reason's Robby Soave wrote. "It is poisonous. And Alexi McCammond is the latest victim of it."
 

"A culture devoid of grace is miserable," Dispatch editor David French tweeted. 

 National Review writer Charles C. W. Cooke called it "absolutely preposterous" and "illiberal."

The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler looked at it as a life lesson, however, referring to the dust-ups over some of President Biden's Cabinet nominees, like Neera Tanden.

"Today's lessons: Don't tweet as a teenager. And don't tweet if you want a Senate-confirmed position," he wrote.

Kessler's commentary drew a harsh response from journalist Glenn Greenwald.

"This warped 'lesson' illustrates the real danger: the message that sent to everyone -- but particularly young people -- is they should never utter a single heterodox or dissenting view because it will be used against them forever," wrote Greenwald. "The best way to breed a pure conformist society."

The Daily Caller's Greg Price noted ruefully that media figures who he claimed had actively encouraged cancel culture were "now very upset that the monster came for one of their own", while numerous other accounts expressed regret over the episode.

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McCammond's tweets were from 2011, when she was a teenager, and included a reference to waking up with "Asian eyes" and slamming her "Asian T.A.," or teaching assistant.

In its report on McCammond's ouster, The New York Times connected the liberal staffers' concern over McCammond's tweets to the current "heightened concern about violence and harassment directed against Asian-Americans."